AI will create a permanent underclass

As AI tools become more widespread, the U.S. labor market is forming a polarization: the gap between those who can harness AI and those who cannot will create a permanent underclass.

The social impact of removing the entry level is like removing the staircase connecting the ground and second floors of a building, while expecting the rest of the floors to remain populated and relevant. When the path and number of good jobs narrow, the impact will fall unevenly…

Many companies are tempted to eliminate entry-level roles in favour of AI, to drive immediate productivity gains. They reason, not incorrectly, that much of the rote work that’s done by junior employees can be easily automated. But this short-term perspective overlooks a critical…

The single most serious risk companies face if they significantly eliminate entry-level jobs in favour of AI is the weakening of the talent and succession pipeline needed to sustain future growth. Many organizations are already grappling with talent scarcity and succession challe…

We have a short window of opportunity to shape the AI revolution so that it enhances and supports jobs, rather than destroying and undermining them, and it is right that government are bringing employers and unions together to think through these issues. Some of the most exposed …

We are witnessing the birth of America’s next underclass: a permanent, tech-illiterate sub-stratosphere of the workforce.

AI and humanoid robots break that logic because they are general-purpose. Yes, the disruption will create new jobs. The problem is that AI and robots will be able to do those new jobs too.

We are not looking at another Industrial Revolution; labor itself becomes optional for the economy.

As a statement of principle, I believe it. In practice, it’s hard. But in principle, if you can track what a worker does for long enough, eventually you learn to do what they’re doing. If I can observe enough examples and have enough computing power and hardware, eventually I can…

If AI can do all work at human level or better, what stops corporations replacing us all with AI? This is the permanent underclass meme.

Whether you talk with engineers, venture capitalists, founders or managers, or with doomers, accelerationists, lefties or libertarians, the so-called San Francisco consensus on the impact of A.I. for workers is bleak. Many are convinced that advanced A.I. will soon surpass human …

Tech billionaires, by contrast, openly anticipate the rise of a semi-permanent underclass as advanced systems eliminate tens of millions of jobs, concentrating wealth and power in the hands of existing capital holders and AI companies.

Foundational models are built and controlled elsewhere. Left to drift, the benefits concentrate where capability already sits, while the risks of job displacement, biased systems, extracting of data for value generation, and new dependencies fall on those least able to absorb the…

If left solely to market forces, AI will naturally evolve around the world's largest languages, leaving many communities on the margins of the AI economy.

Countries that fail to carve out a place for themselves in the emerging AI economy risk ending up on the losing side of this century’s most consequential economic transformation. With no windfall profits to redistribute and no surge in tax revenues to finance universal basic inco…

Economies that lack the physical, digital, and institutional foundations needed to benefit from AI risk being left behind.

Failure, in their eyes, means being left behind while AI automates large swaths of white-collar work – especially coding jobs, which until now have been a veritable licence to print money – and falling into the ranks of the permanent poor.

For some time now, we have seen Silicon Valley technoreactionaries dreaming of a world where they would create a colony on Mars, while an ultra-impoverished population remains on Earth because artificial intelligence would have destroyed many jobs: that's not a very appealing fut…

Workers should not be the test subjects or casualties of unchecked automation, nor should AI give employers a blank check to surveil workers, replace human judgment with unaccountable algorithms, or eliminate jobs while shifting the costs onto workers and communities.

One of the things we talk about as sociologists who study work is this idea about work moving from the career to the job to the gig. And AI makes it even easier to do that.

AI is already changing how people work, and it's bringing real risks: massive job losses, increased workplace surveillance, and weaker bargaining power for workers. We need to get ahead of it.

Companies are already laying off workers citing AI, so we must understand how American workers are at risk.

The same greedy corporate power brokers today want us to believe that killing millions of jobs in the name of AI will be a good thing, and the working class knows better. If AI is just created to finish the job and completely wipe out the rest of the jobs that weren't a casualty …

We need to take action now to protect against AI’s potentially disastrous effects: millions of layoffs, a huge increase in economic inequality, and the creation of a large, new underclass.

But the doomsday case rests on a flawed arithmetic: If AI can do 40 percent of a job’s tasks, then 40 percent of the work must go. But a job is not a to-do list of separable chores.

The likelihood is that AI will not so much replace jobs, as make certain tasks easier and quicker for some people.

The report does not conclude that AI will lead to mass unemployment. The evidence is more nuanced. Labor market effects are better understood through tasks, new work creation, and job quality.

The companies winning this transition aren't replacing workers with AI, they're multiplying human judgment at scale.

There is no indication of widespread job displacement. Only 6.2% of firms reported reduced headcount after adopting AI. Instead, firms are redesigning roles (18.9%) and creating new AI-related jobs (13.9%), indicating that AI is primarily transforming tasks rather than replacing …

The labour market is cooling, but it is not collapsing. And AI is transforming work, not eliminating it.

Five years from now, I believe AI will create more jobs than it eliminates.

We're not expecting that displaced workers will be displaced over the long run. We do expect that ultimately there are going to be more than enough jobs created to reabsorb workers back into the labor market.

New industries will emerge to meet infinitely unfolding consumer demand, just as our ancestors could not have fathomed the modern roles of flight attendants and software salespeople.

Of course AI will absolutely eliminate some tasks and compress some roles, but the claim that AI will produce economy-wide, permanent unemployment is unhelpful marketing, bad economics and worse history. [...] The future is cheaper intelligence, bigger markets, new firms, new ind…

People talk about AI reducing jobs — complete nonsense. It’s causing more software engineers to be hired, and the reason for that is very simple. [...] If you can hire a software engineer and you could generate $9 trillion worth of productive work, why wouldn’t you want to hire m…

I know there’s a lot of concern that many people have, including many smart people, that AI is going to make humans redundant and so on. I totally disagree with this point of view. And I think, in fact, AI is going to create a labor shortage.

Right now, we are not seeing evidence of large-scale AI-related layoffs in California’s labor market. But we do see patterns in certain regions like the Bay Area, in certain tech-heavy sectors, and among highly AI-exposed workers with college degrees. It will be important to cont…

There is zero evidence of job losses because of AI.

So for all the talk about the AI jobs apocalypse, there is simply no strong evidence from either economic history or current economic data that such a thing is happening.

Companies most able to use AI are seeing faster headcount growth than the least AI-exposed companies (52% vs 36%) and higher wage growth (24% vs 17%).

Despite concerns of AI-driven job losses, a new study from JLL finds that a majority of senior business leaders expect their workforces to grow (60%), not shrink (40%) – similarly, most expect AI to reinvent human roles (60%), rather than replace them (40%).

While AI is changing the workforce, current evidence indicates it is doing so by shifting and creating jobs, not replacing them.

AI alone will not create divides. As with any human creation, it can concentrate power or it can distribute opportunities.

The future of work will not be determined by technology alone, but by the policies, institutions and social dialogue that guide it.

With the right skills, workers stand to benefit from emerging job opportunities created by AI, provided the risks are addressed in tandem.

Harnessing the benefits of GenAI requires more than access to technology. Productivity gains depend on investments in human capital and social protection. Ultimately, future labour market outcomes will depend less on exposure alone than on the policy choices to build the prepared…

But this I can promise you: as our economy transforms, we will create new and better jobs. We may not be able to protect every job. But we will protect every worker. Because in Singapore, every worker matters! Bringing about such inclusive growth – that does not happen by itself.…

AI does not determine one inevitable future of work.

AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years. This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame. It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as w…

AI could create significant unemployment if humans do not adapt fast enough; it could create malign new forms of inequality too.

But at the same time we should recognize that there’s a decent possibility that, despite all our efforts, AI still causes significant enduring job loss—and that this may be an intrinsic property of the technology and the way it broadly replicates human cognition.

In the future, it is true that there is a scenario in which there is mass unemployment. But it is also true that when there have been huge upheavals previously, labour markets have adapted, albeit over time, and sometimes it is that gap that makes the difference.

AI and related technologies will transform whole sectors of the economy. It will both disrupt and create. It will disrupt existing jobs, but also create new jobs.

Under one plausible theory of technological development, artificial intelligence will turn the economy into a dystopian split screen. As AI becomes capable of replacing an ever larger share of human work, the companies selling it will grow astronomically, turning a handful of inv…

There is no evidence to date of broad AI-driven labour-market upheaval in Australia. The evidence is best read as an early indication of some modest slowing in employment growth in some highly exposed occupations, not proof of large AI-driven job loss.

the evidence on how AI is affecting the labor market today is inconclusive, and claims about harmful impacts on particular groups of workers are premature.

Where we are right now is that AI is not having a large impact on hiring. That's not surprising. [...] Just because something is likely not happening right now does not mean that it can't happen next year, three years, five years [from now].

AI could hollow out jobs, reshape them gradually, create entirely new ones—or do all three at once. The case for starting to act now doesn’t depend on knowing which.

This is more than a learning curve. It’s a structural challenge for individuals, employers and entire industries — one that risks widening inequalities if left unaddressed.

For now, AI is not (yet) destroying jobs at scale. Even in advanced economies, only a small share of roles currently face a high risk of full automation. Instead, AI is reshaping how work is organised, who benefits, and who is left behind.